Aduro
by Sotalpfs
Summary: Lost in an apocalyptic landscape, Leo must make a life-altering decision.


He's pretty sure they've been going in circles for days now. Seems impossible—the road's unerringly straight, as if drawn by someone with a distaste for angles—but he's seen that same dented can of SPAM before. He knows he has. Leo squints against the sunlight that glints off the tarnished metal. With an effort, he finally tears his eyes away and looks grimly ahead at the dim horizon.

But then, he wonders, maybe Mike's noticed too? He looks sideways at his brother who's off at a short distance to his right, shuffling along the crumbling shoulder of the highway. Mike's staring fixedly at the pavement in front of his feet, but Leo knows that what he's seeing is not of this where or when.

Leo hazards a glance at where the rest of Michelangelo's left arm should be—at the scarred, misshapen stump that ends just above his wrist. His eyes keep drawing helplessly back to it, as if the missing appendage might suddenly snap back into place. Mike's other hand is still clutching the splintered remains of Don's bō, rhythmically squeezing it like a talisman. Leo's mouth tightens, but he keeps quiet. His brother's too fragile for such things these days.

The daylight's already beginning to fade, so he pulls out their one remaining flashlight from their shared backpack and starts scanning the edges of the road. They need to find shelter. Night falls quickly now, and with it comes those…things.

He's only seen them up close once: black, spidery limbs attached to short, snake-like bodies. They move with a preternatural speed and can hide in the smallest of spaces, jumping out at you when you least expect it. No, he thinks, once was more than enough.

Where they come from, he doesn't know; whether cooked up in a military installation, the result of some new chemical pollutant, or from dimension X—it's anybody's guess. Whatever their origin, though, the infestation struck fast; it swept over the country and then the world at such a rapid pace that people hardly had time to react. A 98 percent mortality rate, the media pundits had proselytized in those early days of the outbreak. Humans, animals, nothing was safe. 98 percent. Even now that number plays incessantly in Leo's mind, his brain picking at it like a vulture picking at a skeleton.

What those things don't outright kill, they commander. With a mouth like a lamprey, they burrow deep into the base of their victim's skull, latching onto the cerebral cortex and controlling their hosts like unwilling puppets. And once attached, their sharp, needle-like pincers are impossible to remove, least not without taking a healthy chunk of the victim's flesh with it.

Leo shudders and looks up to see Mike is just a faint silhouette in the deepening gloom. He hurries to catch up, his eyes still vainly searching for a likely spot to hold out for the night. If they don't find somewhere safe soon, they'll be easy targets. True, the creatures can show up at any time of day, but they much prefer to move after the sun goes down, and Leo has no intention of sticking around for that.

Not that they've seen anything, living or otherwise, in weeks. Nothing left now in this strange new world but the rusting hunks of abandoned vehicles—what Mike has taken to calling corpse-si-cars for all the bodies briskly rotting away in them—though this stretch of the road is surprisingly empty.

Leo licks his cracked lips. The last of their supplies were from a single car wreck off a back-country road by I-40, one of those ugly toaster things they found lying on its crushed roof at the bottom of a muddy embankment. The lone human occupant was hanging half-out of the driver's seat, one grotesquely bent leg trapped in the twisted seatbelt. She'd died staring up at the gearshift, her throat torn wide open like a second smile. Below the neck, she was nothing but a spongy mess of raw hamburger. Leo'd been careful to breathe through his mouth as he waved away the flies and leaned over the bloated carcass to pry out the half-full water bottle still wedged between the seats.

His mind still lost in the memory, he pauses mid-stride, unshoulders his pack and rummages in his bag until he finds the bottle. Unscrewing the top, he allows himself a small sip. The taste is stale and plastic, but he forces it down anyway.

Mike, trudging ahead, doesn't even know he's stopped. Leo shoulders his pack again and trots over to his brother's side.

"Mikey," Leo gently nudges him with the water bottle. No response. "Mike," he tries again, a little more forcefully. Michelangelo stops walking and turns his head slowly. His eyes are glassy and red-veined, that haunted look telling Leo everything he already knows. "Here, you need to drink."

Without a word, Mike reaches out and awkwardly fumbles the bottle to his lips. Leo pretends not to notice. His brother's still getting used to the one hand. Mike takes an obligatory sip, makes a face at the off-taste in his mouth and wordlessly hands the bottle back. Leo gives him a wan smile, grateful for some kind of response.

They walk quietly for some time, Leo counting the distance in footsteps. A few days ago, he might've said they were heading east, somewhere along a lonely stretch of road between Flagstaff and Winslow. Now he's not so sure. The mountain ridges never seem to change, their jagged summits etching an all-too-familiar pattern across the desert terrain.

Leo sighs tiredly and looks up at the fading light. The sun's dying. It's still high summer, but it barely crests the horizon anymore; just a sickly pale wedge on the surface of the land—the heat it gives off is so feeble that it hardly warms their skin. At night it goes full dark, as if the sky's been swallowed by one giant black hole. No moon. No stars. Just a void that's so limitless it makes your head spin.

He looks over at his brother in the dusklight and thinks of Don. Their sibling had gone with Raph in search of medical supplies for Mike's arm in whatever ghost town they could find. Leo stayed back with Mike, who was still too injured to move, their first encounter with one of those creatures having proven almost fatal.

How long ago was that? Weeks? Months? Leo shakes his head. Time and memory seems to be slipping, just like everything else.

They were only supposed to be gone a few hours, that much he remembers, but as the day quickly turned to night, the worried knot in Leo's stomach grew tighter. That worry turned to outright fear as a new day dawned then passed. Then another, and another. They soon found themselves out of water—and out of options. Finally, despite Mike's weakened state, they had no choice but to pack up their few belongings and head east, Mike leaning on Leo for support, as they followed the sai etchings Raph had made to mark the route back.

It wasn't long, maybe a mile or two, before they found Don's bō, smashed into an impossible number of pieces. The sight had left them both shaken and Mike retching violently in the dead scrub beneath his feet.

No Don or Raph, though. That gave them some small hope, something to cling to in this world of tragedies. They've been going that way ever since, desperately looking for any sign of their brothers.

But with each fruitless day of searching that passes, it's become impossible for Leo to deny Mike's growing despondency, or how his little brother has become increasingly withdrawn and quiet. Leo often has to repeat himself two, sometimes three times before he gets a response. With deepening dread, Leo can only watch his sibling with an uneasy eye, fearing that the youngest of their lost and far-flung family is crumbling under all the strain.

The flashlight in his hand dims, snapping Leo back to reality. He taps the end in his palm and tries not to think too much about what will happen when the batteries finally die.

And that's when he hears it.

"Hey guys."

A voice from behind him.

Leo twists his head sharply around, sees Mike already running towards the sound. His brother's grinning ear-to-ear. "It's him, Leo," Mike shouts over his shoulder, his voice high with hysterical energy. It's _him_!"

Leo stands frozen in place. It _is_ him. It's Don. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. The flashlight starts to tremble in his hand.

"Wait for me?" The voice calls out again, the tone strangely flat. Leo peers into the shadows after his younger brother, but Mike is quickly swallowed by the encroaching night.

An intense feeling of dread suddenly fills Leo, a horrible premonition whirling in his gut. " _Mike_!" he flings the beam around, making frantic sweeping circles, but all he sees is impenetrable blackness, thick as fog. A slow century seems to pass in front of him. In it he sees his brother die a million violent deaths.

"Mike, don't!" he yells, finding his voice again. "Don't touch him!"

But either Mike doesn't hear or he's ignoring him because he's calling out Don's name.

Leo can just make out Don's toneless response, and the sound of it—the guttural, monotone _sound_ of it—it's the voice of the grave: "Guys? I…I can't see. Where are you?"

The grave, Leo thinks again. The thought jolts him into action. He's off like a shot, sprinting toward the sound of Mike's light footsteps, his own feet seeming not to touch the ground at all. It feels like his brother's impossibly far, like he's running through an endless dreamscape of quicksand. Shadows leap and dance in front of him, throwing illusionary shapes across his path. Leo runs for all he's worth, his breath comes out in short, hitching bursts.

An eternity later, he finally catches sight of Mike's shell and a ripple of relief instantly washes over him.

And then the flashlight falls upon something else.

Even in the near darkness, Leo can see something's not quite right. The hunched figure standing before him sways unsteadily on its feet before lurching forward a half-step. At Leo's approach, the shape turns, lists slightly to the right, then starts to make a slow shambling hobble towards Mike who's skidded to an abrupt halt.

No, Leo thinks. Please…no.

Mike starts to back away in horror. "Leo," Mike gasps. "His..." but he's unable to finish. He doesn't need to though, because as Don steps into the circle of light, his face now fully illuminated, Leo can see the flesh on one side of his face has fallen away, revealing gristle and bone.

Eyes like white lamps peer out at them from hollow sockets, while the one remaining lens in Don's glasses flickers in the nimbus of light thrown by Leo's flashlight.

Leo's heart sinks in despair. This…thing is no longer their brother.

Mike makes a gagging sound. The smell—god, the smell; a thick cloying stench made up of blood, fecal matter and decay, is so powerful that bile rushes into his own throat. Leo's head spins. He wants to look away but can't; instead, he watches in mute horror as small, scabrous bugs crawl out of the cracked ruptures in Don's shell. His brother's lower lip hangs in two bloody flaps across his chin. They move in response to his— _its_ , Leo reminds himself—labored breaths.

Leo can just make out the pincers of the alien creature moving on his sibling's neck, the sharp needles leaving weeping punctures in the flesh. The skin around it is putrefying and giving off a sickly gangrene smell that makes his stomach churn. Leo can see deep furrows lining Don's neck where his brother had clawed at his throat in a futile attempt to dislodge the creature before succumbing to its control.

Mike, visibly pale, takes another step backward.

The Don-thing takes a corresponding step closer, a blood bubble gurgling from the wasted remains of his mouth.

A small whimper escapes from Mike's mouth as he scrambles out of reach. He turns to run—he won't fight his own brother, not like this—but he trips over his own feet and crashes down hard onto the pavement.

The Don-thing lunges toward him in jerky steps, as if the creature that's still attached has yet to figure out how to work the controls.

Thinking fast, Leo bolts forward, shielding Mike from Don, and pulls his sword. The Don-thing comes to an unsteady halt and snarls at him. The sound of it chills Leo to the core, but he sets his jaw and plants his feet in a fighting stance.

As if losing his would-be toy, the Don-thing gives him a baleful glare and lets out a shrill scream, filling the night air with its alien cry, its voice so unlike their brother's. The sound pierces Leo's brain like an iron spike. Mike lets out a pained cry of his own, but the screaming goes on and on. Leo's heard it before; it's a signal to others – a siren call that will bring more of those creatures.

Leo thrusts the flashlight into Mike's hand without looking at him. Ears ringing, blood thundering through his veins, he steps forward and raises his sword. He stops short, though, hesitating, and against his better judgment looks into the creature's single milky eye, searching for a spark of remembrance on that desecrated face, some semblance of life.

But the savage, coldblooded stare thrown back at him is nothing like the kind and gentle brother he once knew. As if in answer to his thoughts, the monster bares its teeth at him, revealing bloodied gums.

Leo knows what he must do, and yet his whole being rebels against it – he can't help thinking that the creature before him is still his own flesh and blood. His heart beating with intense, reluctant love for the brother he lost, Leonardo forces himself to look into that menacing eye one more time. He then blanks his mind to everything but the mechanical motions of his arms.

This time Leo does not hesitate, but swings the sword sharply across, aiming for the creature on Don's neck. The blade connects with a harsh finality—slicing the alien thing in half and sending the cleanly severed skull into the weeds lining the road. Sprays of blood erupt from the neck as Don's body crumples wetly to the ground.

And then it was over.

With dreadful calmness, Leo slowly sheathes his sword. His eyes travel unblinking from the lifeless body at his feet over to Michelangelo who's rocking back and forth, hugging himself with his good arm and making small, keening sounds in the back of his throat.

Suddenly, an emotion Leo couldn't fully name—guilt, hopelessness, sorrow—makes him gasp for air, and he drops to his knees on the pavement next to Mike, not minding the bits of gravel that grind into his skin. Feeling like he's suspended over an unknown and terrifying abyss, he blindly reaches out, grasping for his brother's hand. Instead, he finds the talisman clutched tightly in Mike's fist, his brother squeezing it compulsively. Leo closes his hand over Mike's, stilling it, then reaches his other arm around his shoulders and pulls his sibling close. Michelangelo tenses briefly, resisting, but soon folds against him. Leo holds him tightly, clinging to his younger sibling like a desperate survivor.

They sit like that for an unknown time as the last rays of the sun vanish completely behind the rugged horizon, leaving them in darkness as black as the darkest depths of the ocean.

"We have to keep going," Leo says at last, trying to keep his voice steady. "Raph's still out there."

Mike grips his forearm and looks up at him, his eyes tight on Leo's face. "Where, Leo. _Where_?" His voice is brittle, like he's teetering on the edge of insanity. Leo knows what he's thinking: they haven't seen one of Raph's markings since that day they found Don's bō.

Leo retrieves the flashlight with hands that tremble, considering. His brother's face is illuminated by the weak halo of the beam, his wide eyes dancing with a crazed light of their own.

Leo looks down at the blood splattered across his torso; it's a mark he knows he'll carry forever.

He squeezes his eyes shut, as if from a sudden blow. He's exhausted, tired of trying, tired of holding on to the lie. Ahead of them lay darkness. Behind them death and despair. It would be so easy to give in, to just lie down in the middle of the road and let the creatures that were surely bearing down on them have their way.

Leo forces himself stop, refusing to follow the thought further. He looks down at his younger brother who's still huddled against him, small and vulnerable. In that moment a fierce protectiveness that's almost painful washes over him. He has to hold it together, he thinks—he must—because the inner light of Michelangelo is more precious than a thousand dying suns.

Leo lets out a steadying breath and looks east, where Raph and Don had been heading before they'd disappeared.

"Towards the sun," he says, his voice thick with emotion.

Always towards the sun.


End file.
